There is nothing dearer to a person who doesn't like chocolate than cheesecake - with the exception of milk puddings. But when it comes to historic recipes, even cheesecake might be categorized as milk pudding because, more often than not, a pastry chef or housewife would make the cheese on their own. I could dedicate the entire blog to cheesecake and those who follow me already know that I have blabbed about (homemade) cheese and different types of cheesecake - including ancient Roman savillum, all-time favorite junket and 19th century torta di ricotta - but for now, let's focus on this cheesecake.
It's impossible to browse a list of historic recipes without coming across several types of cheesecake but The Accomplisht Cook
(1660) by Robert May features the very best cheesecakes of English as well as French cuisine - because he trained in both countries.
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| The Stuart Restoration begins - Hendrick de Meijer (between 1660 and 1689) |
I would categorize Robert May's cheesecakes into the ones he filled with raisins, those he did not, the couple of recipes he labelled as 'Italian', and the cheesecakes that he made 'without milk'. This last category might sound intriguing to us but it was not in the 1660s when, as I said, a pastry chef would make fresh cheese himself - using the very best milk that he could find. That was the 'morning milk'. A cheesecake without milk was made with just cream and yolks. All the other types used freshly-made cheese, as well as the standard ingredients (butter, cream and yolks), rosewater and spices. Ground almonds or white breadcrumbs were a must if you wanted your cheesecake filling to be stiff - which Robert May advised. Some of the fillings and even the crust were painted with saffron. All of the cheesecakes were in tartshells, made of puff-paste or shortcrust, although, in one recipe, the cheese mixture was filled into a shell that used ale barm, which is a type of yeast. Some of the cheesecakes were iced (which is unlikely in modern recipes), and the icing was made with egg yolks and sugar and rosewater - like a mixture poured over traditional milk puddings or 'milk pies' in several countries across Europe. Another kind of topping, in the cheesecakes Robert May called Italian, was made of crushed biscuits and/or ground pistachios.
A different way to categorize Robert May's cheesecakes is by method. In most recipes, filling and crust were baked together. However, there were few others, in which the cheese mixture was boiled and the tartshell baked, and then you assembled the cheesecake and it was ready.
Unlike other cookbook authors from the past, Robert May was kind enough to give detailed hints about ingredients and methods and even baking times for his cheesecakes but since his recipes were meant for young chefs who more or less knew the basics, he didn't write everything down. So there is always something that he left for us to calculate - either the quantity of cheese (though he says how much liquid to use) or cream, sugar, and flavors. One thing The Accomplisht Cook has in common with other historic cookbooks is the large number of people the recipes would feed. That's why you must always halve or quarter - unless you are having a party.
The average quantity of flour needed for Robert May's cheesecakes, when quantities are given, is one 'pottle', which is approximately 1.9kg of flour. Surpisingly, especially compared to the richness of the filling, the crust was made with very little butter (about 5% of the flour) and no specified amount of milk or/and cream. Obviously, cheese fillings that were loaded into puff-paste resulted in more luxurious desserts. Not one recipe in The Accomplisht Cook omitted the tartshell, which means there was no such thing as cheese pudding in Early Modern cuisine. There were also recipes for 'cheesecakes', which makes one think of individual cakes or tarts. However, given the large amount of flour used in most recipes, the plural form could mean a number of large cheesecakes to be prepared for a banquet. In these instances, the shells were refered to as 'coffins'.
The recipe I adapted for today's post is halved - following calculations that are hopefully correct. Like most of Robert May's recipes, this one starts with the quantity of milk you need to make the cheese and not of the cheese itself: "_Otherways._Take six quarts of new milk, run it pretty cold, and when it is tender come, drain from it the whey, and hang it up in a strainer, press the whey from it, and beat it in a mortar till it be like butter, then strain it through a strainer, and mingle it with a pound of butter with your hand; then beat a pound of almonds with rose-water till they be as fine as the curds; put to them the yolks of twenty eggs, a quart of cream, two grated nutmegs, and a pound and half of sugar, when the coffins are ready to be set into the oven, then mingle them together, and let them bake half an hour; the paste must be made of milk and butter warmed together, dry the coffins as you do for a custard, make the paste very stiff, and make them into works."
This and other cheesecakes are featured in Section XII of The Accomplisht Cook under the category of "Creams, Sack-possets, Sillabubs, Blancmangers, White-pots, Fools, Wassels etc."
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